Editors express concern over 'bad journalism'

New Delhi: Instances of “bad journalism” like insensitive portrayal of victims and pronouncement of guilt without trial were posing challenges to the media, say leading media figures, who called for effective self-regulation. The media personalities, who were participating at a discussion “Challenges facing the media” today, at the same time said aberrations and excesses in media were no more or less in magnitude than in other institutions. The discussion was organised by the Editors Guild of India. [caption id=“attachment_370398” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Agencies[/caption] Former Editor of The Hindu N Ravi said media was facing an external challenge of “growing intolerance” and an internal challenge of “plain bad journalism”. Speaking about his perception of the growing intolerance of the media, Ravi said it was not confined to the political class but extended to the bureaucrats and to the judges as well. He added that “plain bad journalism” constituted another threat. “There are well known instances of bad journalism like unfair reporting, pronouncement of guilt without fair trial, invasion of privacy, insensitive portrayal of victims and women for that matter,” he said. “However, in the overall functioning of the media such cases were exceptions and not the rule. But very people base their cases on these exceptions, on these extreme situations and these extreme situations provoke calls for tighten media laws and media regulation,” he added. Effective self regulation and better training were the solutions to the twin challenges that were being faced by the media, Ravi told the participants at the discussion moderated by Business Standard chairman TN Ninan. Network-18’s founder Editor Raghav Bahl said while there were aberrations and excesses in the media, they were no more or less in magnitude than in other institutions. “A lot of these aberrations and excesses are the aberrations and the excesses of inexperience and youth. The (TV news) industry in itself is extremely young, the people who are field reporters are young,” Bahl said. PTI